Which Country Grows the Most Avocados?

Avocados from Chile’s presence at the conference got me thinking: Who grows avocados? Where does Chile fit in? Is production from Chile on the upswing?

Fortunately, one of my favorite statistical databases — FAOSTAT — had the answers3 and Tableau Public made it fairly easy to tell the story with charts.

Below you’ll find an interactive “story” about world avocado production and avocado demand in the U.S. Click the grey squares at the top to move between three charts. After the charts, I’ll provide some comments. (For a bigger and/or possibly more properly sized charts, check out the autosized version of my avocado story at Tableau Public.)

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The first chart shows that Mexico is the current avocado giant, with almost 30% of global production. The second ranked country (the Dominican Republic) produces less than 9% of the global total.

The second chart show Mexico’s dominance and a blur of lines for everyone else. In the last 10 years, Mexico has increased production by more than 50%. In the last 30 years production has more than tripled. In the last 50 years, the increase is more than 11 times. U.S. production, in contrast, has increased by only 5.3 times over the last 50 years.

Also in the second chart, Chile had a burst of growth between 1997 and 2007, roughly quadrupling their output, but production has been level since then. Production is about 1/10th that of Mexico and roughly equivalent to U.S. production.

The final chart shows approximate U.S. avocado demand in the U.S., which has skyrocketed since 2000, from about 2 pounds per person (0.9 kg) to over 6 pounds per person (2.7 kg). U.S. eaters are lightweights, though, compared to Mexico’s 16.2 pounds per person (7.4 kg), Israel’s 16.7 pounds per person (7.6 kg), and Costa Rica’s 17.8 pounds per person (8.1 kg) 4.

My guess is that “avocado toast” came from Australia, where the dish probably had its major upgrade into something gourmet-ish (details on this in the Bon Apetit article)..

Interesting factoid: when I put “avocado toast” into Google Books Ngrams, it found nothing (up to 2008, the most recent date allowed).

Finally, two fun quotes from the Bon Appetit article (there are many more — the author is quite funny): “Though nowadays, he adds, it’s probably known as Adjacent Sqirl Heights. It’s a joke. Also not a joke.” [to be sure, this is a pretty LA-specific joke] “He’s wearing loafers and a pumpkin-colored cashmere overcoat (in this heat, an act of fashion martyrdom), open at the front to reveal denim with a mom-jeans rise.”